Russia is yet to receive the new US plan to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, according to its UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya, who told TASS this week, following retiring US envoy Nikki Haley about the new initiative: “We hear about it for the second year already, they regularly promise this, but these are ‘jam tomorrow’ promises.”
Say what you will about Russian diplomats, they know their English Lit. There “Jam tomorrow” note is a quote from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There,” where the White Queen offers Alice “Two pence a week, and jam every other day.”
“Alice couldn’t help laughing, as she said, ‘I don’t want you to hire me – and I don’t care for jam.’
“‘It’s very good jam,’ said the Queen.
“‘Well, I don’t want any to-day, at any rate.’
“‘You couldn’t have it if you did want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.'”
“We have not seen it so far, and nobody knows when we will see it,” Ambassador Nebenzya said, referring to the Trump administration’s promises of peace in our time (there’s a familiar quote for you – it was used 140 years ago, by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, upon returning from the Congress of Berlin, and then, much more infamously, 80 years ago, by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, upon returning from Munich).
Nikki Haley told the UN Security Council that the new US Middle East peace plan “contains much more thoughtful detail” and “recognizes that realities on the ground in the Middle East have changed in powerful and important ways.”
The literate diplomat Nebenzya stressed that “no plan will be viable if the internationally recognized basis for the Middle East settlement is not taken into account and it is crucial to rely on a two-state solution.”
TASS noted that UN ambassadors from eight European Union member-states had issued a statement warning the Trump administration that its initiative could spell failure: “We, the European Union members of the Council, would like to reiterate once more and emphasize the EU’s strong continued commitment to the internationally agreed parameters for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on international law, relevant UN resolutions and previous agreements.”
“Any peace plan that fails to recognize these internationally agreed parameters would risk being condemned to failure,” the EU envoys’ statement said.
The joint statement came from Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden. But worry not, come May 23, 2019, the day Europeans vote for their new continental parliament, things could look very different regarding the EU’s Middle East policy. The folks Western media love to call “right-wing extremists” are going to take the center in at least three of the above nations.
